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Shades and Investiture


Oudeis

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How do shades respond to Investiture? Is it possible that it would provoke them? Would they see it as the equivalent of movement? Of igniting flames? Does it have its own reaction? Do they not react?

 

Can you Soothe/Riot a shade? Can you control a shade via emotional allomancy? Would copper hide your activities from a shade? Can you soulcast a shade? Would a shardblade hurt a shade? Can shades be victims of hemalurgic theft? Can they receive hemalugic spikes (that last one would admittedly take some very specific doing)? Would they react to shardplate like it were silver, or a simple barrier, or what? Would they feel the strike of ChayShan? Can you Chromium Leech one? Could you give one Breath? Could you Command one? If a shade worldhopped to Nalthis and killed a man who had a Breath, could that man Return? If you had a lot of Breath, would the shade eat the Breath instead, giving you time to escape as your sacrifice your Breath? How do shades interact with spren?

 

Are they considered human? Do they have spiritwebs and cognitive aspects? Would someone who could use Investiture while alive retain the ability as a shade? Would the "feeding" shade take that part of your spiritweb? Do they only target humans? Would they attack a kandra, koloss, new-koloss, parshendi, or aimian? Would they attack an Awakened rope?

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Hrm...

 

I think we'd all agree that Shardblades would hurt them. I'd be surprised if Shardplate didn't offer at least some resistance, though possibly less than absolute.

 

Everything else I say, is broadest speculation, just shots in the dark.

 

First, I believe that shades are primarily spiritual beings, with the physical aspect we've seen, and very little in the way of a cognitive aspect. This will flavor most of my answers.

 

I think they will have some reaction to Investiture. I have no idea what it is, and I'd guess it'd be different from any reaction we've seen so far. I don't think it'd send them flying into an immediate rage, but I suspect it would draw their attention in a negative way. I do think a coppercloud is the way around this; in fact, I personally believe that they would try to avoid the entire area of a coppercloud, the way they try not to bump into people unless they're provoked.

 

I think you can Riot or Soothe a shade, but it's not terribly useful. Either will provoke them, since you're using Investiture, and really any emotion in them is prolly a bad thing (I doubt they have enough "compassion" or "national pride" on their own that Rioting these emotions would be at all helpful) and I think at best, Soothing could calm the provocation you're causing just by burning brass, and there are likely to be more shades in range to sense you than you can Soothe. I think The Flaw was crafted specifically by Ruin as an aspect of hemalurgy which is an art related to allomancy, so I would be very surprised if you could control them with Soothing.

 

I would suspect you cannot Soulcast a shade. I think their presence in the cognitive realm is tenuous enough to prohibit such an attempt, and I don't think their substance is "physical" enough for you to affect, anyway. I am not at all sure of this, however.

 

Hemalurgy is said to be universal... it largely depends on what bindpoints are. I suspect that they are spots on your body that correlate directly to aspects of your spiritweb. In my opinion, shades have more prominent spiritwebs, and less prominent bodies. So, you might be able to use hemalurgy by bypassing the need to go through the body, and stabbing their spiritweb in the exact right spot? Which might steal... I don't know? Perhaps just suck the shade in entirely, like ghostbusters? I do not think they could receive a spike. If they could, I don't think you could get the spike to stay in them.

 

ChayShan, who knows? I don't believe Chromium has any effect on "innate Investiture", which is what I believe shades are predominantly made of, so I'd say no, leeching one wouldn't do much. Perhaps it'd have some effect? Like to stun a shade, or slow it down?

 

I am sure you could not Awaken one, though honestly I think you could maybe give it Breath... which might react very oddly, giving it back some semblance of life, or it might just eat the Breath. Could you make it into some sort of Lifeless? That sounds awesome, so I'm gonna wildly speculate that yes. You can turn a shade into a Lifeless and give it Commands, but unless it feeds, it will consume its own Breath like a Returned, and go back to mindless destruction. There's also the issue of the damage you receive to touch it and give it the Breath and the Command.

 

Returning... depends on how Returning works. I think a shade is what's left of the spiritual aspect of the last shade's victim, so... if Returned lose their spiritweb, but have it replaced with a Splinter of Endowment that inhabits their body and cognitive aspect, then yes. Your own spiritweb could turn into a shade, and the Splinter would still re-animate your body as a Returned. You might share a cognitive aspect with the shade which would be all manner of weird. If, instead, all three of your aspects are preserved, if the Splinter simply binds them together again and keeps them alive, then no, you cannot both become a shade and Return.

 

No idea how shades would interact with spren. Prolly ignore most spren. The intelligent spren... again, I dunno. Prolly just avoid their specific immediate area, like they do with people. If a provoked shade ever attacked a sentient spren... I dunno. I'd say the shade would prolly just straight-up eat it, and would not create a new shade.

 

I think you lose any ability to access Investiture when you are a shade. I don't think a feeding shade gains anything from eating someone with Investiture. I think they would attack anything with Innate Investiture, though obviously it has to be alive. They attack hunting animals, so they'd surely attack parshendi or koloss. I think they would attack mistwraigths, though if you think about it mistwraiths are almost perfectly evolved to evade shade predation. They don't move fast, don't use fire, and don't spill the blood of their victims. I suspect that, if provoked, they would, in fact, attack an Awakened rope. What would happen if you Commanded a rope, "Go over there and start a fire"? Would it kill just the rope, and if you were far enough away to avoid the frenzy, you would remain safe? Or would it "feel" your connection back to the rope, and hunt you down?

 

I find that last one very confusing. The shades attacked a woman because her horse stepped on a striker the woman didn't know existed. Exactly what level of logic stops exactly there, not blaming the horse, who did the actual action, or Silence, who set the whole plan in motion? Why was this woman blamed for "I rode this horse down a path, but didn't pick out every footstep he made, and had no idea there as a bomb"? So yeah, i have no idea how shades would decide Awakened ropes work.

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  • 2 years later...

What makes you think that they exist mostly in the spiritual realm? I would think that they exist mostly in the cognitive realm. Blood can be soulcast, which means that it has a large presence in the cognitive realm. Fire is similar. I don't know what running has to do with this, but it probably fits in somehow.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I used to suspect that Shades were predominantly spiritual because they seem to be made of souls, and I believe souls are physical spiritual. However, now we know that the spiritual realm ignores distance and the cognitive does not, and Shades do seem to be affected by distance. So now I'm less sure. But then, there's the whole "it matters who spilled the blood," "it matters who started the fire" which seems to be a spiritual connection... also he's said (granted, inconsistently) that shades are cognitive shadows. So now I just don't know what I think.

 

That said, I'm not sure blood's ability to be soulcast means they have a "large" cognitive presence. Almost all things have all three aspects, and you don't need an especially large cognitive one to be Soulcast. We've seen very large things, physically, have very small cognitive aspects, even when they get Soulcast; I'd provide specifics but I'm too tired to type up a spoiler tag.

 

EDIT: Because Yata was kind enough to point out to me that I made a small yet pivotal mistake in word-selection.

Edited by Oudeis
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Okay... again, I'm not sure what you mean by "large" cognitive presence, or why any of this means blood has it. It certainly has a cognitive aspect, I don't think anyone would disagree. Some arcana will interact with it on the cognitive, some one the spiritual. Some might interact on the physical, even. Figberts seemed to be implying (and correct me if I'm misunderstanding) that shades must be cognitive, because the interact with blood, and anything that interacts with blood has to be cognitive. I do not think I agree with the underlying assumption.

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I suppose everything has the same size in the various aspects, probably is the Identity that may be strong or weak (and of course epic for the stick).

 

I have always though at the Shades like Cognitive being for a couple of simply (and maybe meaningless) reasons:

1) The word itseft is "near" to the Cognitive Shadow, of course cognitive being.

2) The Shards are the only Spiritual beings we never saw and the Shards itself can't appear easy in the physical world.

 

Oudeis I didn't understand your post about "souls are physical", may you explain again ?

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About blood, there was something Cognitive about it being in motion. Some WoB on Hemalurgy.

 

It's actually about the Spiritual

 

Master_Moridin

1. What is the relationship between blood and the Spiritual Realm? (Since Hemalurgy needs blood to graft the sDNA in a spike into someone else's sDNA)

Brandon Sanderson

The blood being in motion is part of it.

(source)

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Oudeis I didn't understand your post about "souls are physical", may you explain again ?

 

The full explanation is long, technical, and would require years of research to understand, but at the risk of oversimplifying, I made a really stupid mistake. =P I meant to say spiritual, and I am updating the post to reflect this.

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The full explanation is long, technical, and would require years of research to understand, but at the risk of oversimplifying, I made a really stupid mistake. =P I meant to say spiritual, and I am updating the post to reflect this.

nevermind man..it happens ;-) .... Mister Sanderson also sometime confused the words (like the famous error with Atium and Cognitive Realm)

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Shades are Cognitive Shadows (albeit really dangerous ones). So anything that  could hurt a Cognitive Shadow could hurt a Shade.

 

So. What is the Realmatic importance of silver?

We don't know if Threnody Silver has something special... without this information we may speculate with very little precision

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We don't know if Threnody Silver has something special... without this information we may speculate with very little precision

It's likely that non-Threnodan silver doesn't have any special Investiture. If it did, it would probably be accessible through Allomancy, and silver is Allomantically useless. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have special properties relating to the Cognitive Realm without being Invested, of course.

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It's likely that non-Threnodan silver doesn't have any special Investiture. If it did, it would probably be accessible through Allomancy, and silver is Allomantically useless. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have special properties relating to the Cognitive Realm without being Invested, of course.

I actually think about a Scadrial Threnody proximity, today I will write a topic about, but if I have right, some echoes of the Shards' power on Scadrial may reach Threnody and be twisted a little by this minor Shardworld and its focus.

 

It's a raw idea, I need to refine it better.

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I guess I assumed silver has no power -- The Simple Rules do.  Whatever binds the shades, all their Investiture-derived effects are crafted to obey the rules, and one of them is "stop at silver".  It's sudo Investiture (hah.  I make pun).

I thought this when I read the book the first time, but then I thought that also the damage of a Shade are "healed" by the Silver... this fact made me, though that there is something in the Silver itself there.

 

Of course unless the Shades' touch auto replicate a proto-Shade inside the victim, this Baby-Shade continue to feed of the victim until the victim dies and a full grown Shades spawns

Edited by Yata
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There's a quote I'll try to find... cannot find it but I've asked Kurk for it. It says that burning aluminum would be an effective way to cure yourself of shaderot. This implies to me that a shade is leaving something Invested in you, and that killing that thing might be what cures you.

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There's a quote I'll try to find... cannot find it but I've asked Kurk for it. It says that burning aluminum would be an effective way to cure yourself of shaderot. This implies to me that a shade is leaving something Invested in you, and that killing that thing might be what cures you.

Yeah I remeber the quotes... if I remeber right in the WoB Mister Sanderson said the burning Allumin was a better "cure" than apply threnody's silver.

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The question came about when Kurk and I were discussing shaderot, and how weird it is, and how it's sorta like a Forgery. His answer REALLY shocked us.

The whole trascript is updated by what I rememberer... Good :)

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